Well, as a side benefit, I think this article has led me to the perfect book to buy for my partner's upcoming birthday...

Those sure were some Sounds. I think I heard a sort of honk in there...

Questioning AI Resource List Excellent summary of major problems with companies’ focus on AI written by expert in machine learning: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/ Another g...

great thread! i agree that we have to fight. i put together a resource to help people who want to convince others how bad the genai situation is, 11 pages of links that i keep updating: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

I've never been through 'downsizing' in a workplace before - not that this is quite the same, cos everyone knew there was an endpoint to their employment. It's changed the place so much though - it was a really social workplace & while people are still friendly, it all feels kind of...flat.

My workplace recently had 5 year long project, with a big associated pool of government funding, come to an end. The project had a lot of temporary positions associated with it, and so like 30 people I've been working with over the past few years have suddenly left. It feels like a ghost town.

Wow, I think that rises beyond the level of mere monkey business and may even constitute Mischief or Shenanigans

Even accounting for inflation, what my parents paid for their (admittedly very rundown when they bought it) 3br house in the eastern suburbs in 1983 wouldn't buy the 2br apartment I live in in Western Sydney now.

Bad things happen all the time, all over the world. Not all of them are things we are so directly implicated in. There's a difference between "things we should care about and speak up about" and "things our elected representatives are facilitating, in our names".

"Why care so much about Palestine? Why protest about it on the other side of the world?" - my country supplies military equipment that is being used to destroy Gaza. My govt continues to parrot how 'Israel has a right to defend itself. My govt is changing its own laws to stifle criticism of Israel.

Also, while it's important to be aware of genicide & human rights abuses *everywhere*, the genocide in Gaza is different in that many of us live in countries whose governments *actively & materially support the genocidal Israeli state*. My country has imposed sanctions on Myanmar, but not Israel.

AI industry threatening us with a good time here 👀

As someone who's disabled & cant drive for that reason & is restricted to mass transit, my own two feet or (where I can find a safe riding route) cycling, please don't appropriate the needs of disabled people to try to win an argument. You don't know what you're talking about.

The replies to this extremely correct and reasonable take are an indication of how car culture rots the human brain.

No-one is saying 'force ambulances to stick to the speed limit - just 'force Dave, who is impatient and thinks going 5mph over the limit "doesn't make a difference" to stop being a dancer to himself and others'

Goddamn. The answer to this person's objections is so obvious it makes it clear that they aren't responding in good faith. Limiters wouldn't need to applied to emergency vehicles, just private ones. And you shouldn't be speeeding in your own car even in an emergency - you risk causing another one!

If you see this, post a cat!

I feel like my social circle has this 'Waiting for Godot'-esque conversation semi-annually where we all go "I miss Livejournal. We should all have blogs again" and then do nothing about it.

Looking up from the ground at the trunk of an enormous fig tree. The lower half of it is almost completely obscured by dangling, tangled roots that have grown down from its lower branches.

A wider view of the trunk of an enormous fig tree. The lower half of it is almost completely obscured by dangling, tangled roots that have grown down from its lower branches.

An enormous fig tree, with part of the lower trunk visible on the left, almost completely obscured by dangling, tangled roots that have grown down from its lower branches. Across the top of the image a huge branch extends, as wide as a human torso. Tangles of roots hang down all along it, except for a gap just wide enough for an adult to walk through.

This creature lives in a big public park. I've walked by hundreds of times over 25 years or more, but I never noticed it before. Or maybe it wasn't always so...creaturely. But this looks like decades' growth. I stood next to it for a long time, feeling like there must a way in & away from this world

Hey, have you guys done 'Rififi' yet? If not it's a perfect Heist Season pick (although, fair warning, it's gonna rack up some misogyny points 😬). The talk about 'show don't tell' suspense & showing events in real time reminded me - it has one of the most suspensful heist scenes I've ever watched

Seems like a totally fair response, tbh (I say as I shut my window violently because my stupid neighbour is smoking AGAIN for the 3000th time today).

Kinda feels Platonic - not as in the relationship terminology but as in 'resembling the thought of Plato'. There is an ideal form and function to which things should conform, which is somehow truer, more essential and more natural than the things that actually exist.

Remember, using ChatGPT to make fun of how wrong it gets things still adds to the user statistics

[The cats' bathhouse] [picture]

nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1514...

I'm both intrigued & annoyed when weird random accounts follow me, but the more it happens the clearer it becomes that there are accounts on this site that just follow *literally anyone who mentions a particular word/phrase*. Idk how they're doing it & I would love it if someone could make them stop

'Aphadris' and 'Lundis' sound like place names from a b-grade fantasy novel

Nice to see that the weird gun toting libertarian bros have been driven out of 'Momtana' and it has now been taken over by moms.

My understanding is that having a PhD is less about being a genius and more about being able to absorb a colossal amount of frustration, hardship and ennui and have enough left of your sanity at the end to write something coherent and academic about the process.

I always get him mixed up, visually, with Leonard Cohen, despite the fact that I own a Lou Reed album *with a pic of him on the cover*.

"Time to take a pic of me all dressed up in my nice, grown up suit...wait, where's Mr. Stripey? We can't take the photo without my best pal!!"

I am sad for him that his current choices are 1) my fucking hopless, half-arsed attempt at care, as a human who cam barely care for themselves and b) literal death.